Category Archives: Get Aligned

Decide what kind of leader to be and collect followers.

How rational actors can reach agreement.

October 27, 2015 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment

Thesis: In the face of the same data, two rational people will make the same decision.

Implication: When two people disagree on something it is likely that there is something one knows that the other does not.

Strategy: When two people disagree, each should strive to reveal what is relevant that s/he knows and that the other does not until both know everything that the other knows.

Conclusion: Agreement should be reached if both are rational; that is, neither is acting based on self-interest, emotion, fear, etc.

Implication: When you reach an impasse with someone on an important matter, reflect on what is important that you know that the other party might not know and offer to share it. Similarly, ask the other party what s/he knows that is important that you may not know. Continue reading How rational actors can reach agreement. →

Compensation, Executive Transition, Finance Matters, Get Aligned, Grow, People Matters

Paying Fair: Four paths to fair pay and succession for private venture executives.

April 25, 2015 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment

Background

Public company equity-based pay practices, such as stock, restricted stock, and employee stock options are often a poor fit for private companies committed to reward leaders for performance and growth and to motivate leadership and capital succession.

Equity based programs that make sense and work well in a public company come with many ills for private companies: they can be costly, tax-inefficient, static, ineffective, and sometimes downright unfair. In the worst case, equity pay practices can derail the owners’ plans for growth and succession.

Dynamic synthetic equity presents a more tailored solution for private companies interested in leadership and capital succession. Restricted stock and employee stock options often distort outcomes for private companies. Consider that:

The underlying stock price in a private company gyrates as owners enter and exit from, for example, a living or a death buyout or even a recapitalization. Stock price can jump 50% – unjustly rewarding the owners of true equity awards.

Continue reading Paying Fair: Four paths to fair pay and succession for private venture executives. →

Get Aligned, Manage to Lead, People Matters

Leading Beyond Self: The Dynamic Balance of Management and Leadership in Organizational Success

November 12, 2014 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment

Every organization has, or needs, a leader. And it is true that the power of one committed, clever person can make all the difference in the world. But no one individual, even the greatest leader, does anything of much significance alone.

The simple truth is that it takes a team to lead an organization. The action motivated by this truth is for the leader to decide what kind of leader to be and then to attract, collect, and align their top team and collect followers.

The best leaders figure out that it is not all about them. It is about their organizations and the decision to either manage or lead is a false dichotomy. The one in charge needs to manage in order to lead and, indeed, can and should Manage to Lead their organization to achieve their stated vision. The top person’s job starts with managing themself to lead.

The leader’s work is never finished; the job is 24/7 and comes with a ubiquitous, omnipresent, and incessant sense of accountability to owners, investors, lenders, donors, customers, taxpayers, partners, employees and their families, and the local community. The mantel
of responsibility is never unyoked and may cause physical distress to those not cut out for the role, or the equivalent of a runner’s high to those who are!
The role and specific tasks vary considerably with organization maturity and scale, but the responsibilities presented in the above figure are core to the top job from day-one. Despite the clarity afforded by the list, deciding how to spend time hour-by-hour, day-to-day is far from clear for many, if not most, leaders.

Some leaders wrestle with whether to get work done themselves or to assign and develop others to perform the functions of their organization in an ever-more systematic, teachable, scalable, predictable, and reliable way. As Michael Gerber says in his eMyth Revisited, it comes down to whether the one in charge wants to “make pizza” or “build a pizza-making business.”

When the one in charge decides to do personally what thet believe is needed to get work done, no matter how right it seems at the time, they should consider the following, all of which can lead to less than optimal results:

Time spent on a specific thing is time that cannot be spent on something that is more important.
Everyone else in the organization will refrain from doing what the person in charge does for fear of upstaging or competing; their default thinking is that “If the top-dog is doing it, they had better not interfere.”
Others in an organization tend to assume that what the person in charge does is right and correct, so they fail to think critically about it and so tend not to push back when they should.

The net effect is that the most important thing for the top-person to do does not get done, they end up doing what others can and should do, but now avoid doing, and there is a lack of critical thinking which can lead to poor performance.

The organization’s ability to perform and grow becomes constrained by its top person; and that top person might then wonder if they should work on being a better manager, or work on being a better leader.

The answer for most is that theyshould manage to lead as explored in the eponymous IntelliVen workbook.

Executive Assessment, Get Aligned, Manage to Lead, People Matters

How an Executive Performance Assessment Process helped a COO become a CEO.

October 29, 2014 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment

Leaders of fast growing, early stage organizations operate at such a fast pace that often the last thing there is time to do is assess each member of the top team’s performance to determine how to prepare them for the next stage of evolution.

Most team members know each other pretty well. They have a good idea what each other is good at, has contributed, how they have grown, and what they should focus on next for success. However, team members rarely have the time, energy, training, or nerve to share what they know in a forthright, supportive conversation with one another.

The way to improve Individual and team performance is to open their JoHari Window (click the figure above for more on the JoHari Window). Otherwise they are in the dark about what others know about them that, if they were known, would lead to improved performance.

For example, it came to light during a professionally facilitated Executive Performance Assessment Process that the COO of a $15M, high-performance, and fast growing software firm made those reporting to him feel discounted when he turned to his phone during weekly one-on-one sessions. The team reviewed collected data and decided to let him know his behavior was off-putting and disempowering.

The COO was surprised by the feedback but made a commitment to behave differently. He asked for their assistance to help him change. All were supportive and even chuckled when he placed a sign on his desk during one-on-one sessions that said:

“Tell Me If I Am Being Disrespectful!”

The feedback worked in that his behavior changed. Soon the COO was promoted to CEO with the respect and admiration of his entire team now a $150M enterprise!

A successful Performance Assessment Process collects input from each executive on the others to determine what each:

- Is good at
- Has contributed
- Has done to grow
- Should focus on next

Input is consolidated, peer-reviewed, and fine-tuned to crystallize the most important messages for each team member.

The best practice is for top teams to implement, internalize, and institutionalize an approach to the essential performance conversations in a way that is straightforward, easy, and routine. The approach is walked through in detail in this video clip (736):

The ideal approach guarantees that the team helps each member individually, and the team as a whole, achieve their full potential to perform and grow. The result is increased likelihood of successful transition to the next stage of organization evolution.The IntelliVen Executive Assessment Process (see data collection instrument above), in addition, recognizes that a different mix of competencies is key to organization success in each stage of organization evolution (Concept, Start up, Credible, Sustainable, and Mature). In each stage it is important for leaders to recognize how, who, and when an executive should be developed or a new executive brought on board.

Consequently, the ideal assessment process evolves by stage of organization maturity to help the top team identify holes so that they can decide to either groom or hire talent to fill upcoming needs.

For example, in a Start-up, executive skill in risk taking, execution, cash generation (i.e. sales and/or fund raising), and domain expertise are paramount. Strategic product management, operational excellence, and financial acumen are also important but not the same degree as execution competencies.

In the face of upcoming organization growth, the relative importance of key competencies changes to address what comes with organization maturity.

There is no perfect executive leader and no perfect executive team for all stages of evolution. However, a CEO and his/her Core Leadership Team can collectively achieve the needed combination of competency to increase the likelihood that their organization will succeed in the current stage of organization maturity.

IntelliVen helps organization leaders and their top teams fulfill their potential to perform and grow by implementing an Executive Assessment Process that efficiently guides fast moving, growing, early stage organizations to develop each team member, and of the top team as a whole, according to the venture’s evolutionary stage.

Reply to this post in confidence with your contact information to explore further how your organization can benefit from implementing an Executive Assessment Process.

Core points in this post were contributed by Reid Jackson, Dr. Dory Hollander, Dr. Ron Fell, Fred Nader, and Brent Green PhD.

Bi-weekly One-on-One Executive Meetings

January 15, 2014 Peter DiGiammarino

Leaders whose direct reports submit regular (e.g., monthly) status reports on progress, problems, and plans should consider re-working their approach to include more frequent (e.g., bi-weekly), one-on-one, real-time meetings to discuss progress and to collaborate and align on how things are going, priorities, and next steps.

Specifically, top leaders ask each direct report to prepare and submit a day or so ahead of meeting one-on-one:

An update on progress since last meeting, including a read-out of measures previously agreed upon to track progress.

A list of the top one, two, or at most three things they are working on, and for each:
- What they seek to accomplish
- What has been done so far to accomplish it
- What has happened as a result of what has been done so far
- What has been learned from above
- What they plan to do next.

What they need from their leader and / or from others in the organization to be successful.

Note:

Prepared materials are submitted ahead so that they are well thought-out and not just what comes to mind while meeting. Failure to prepare and submit ahead of the meeting generally leads to the time in the meeting being used to prepare what should have been submitted leaving little or no time to thoughtfully process what has been prepared.

Performance measurements are published and reviewed ahead of meeting so that meeting time is not spent revealing and absorbing new data that is best taken-in, absorbed, and reflected upon to reach a point-of-view ahead of time.

There will be variability in level of detail (too high-level or too detailed) across direct reports. The leader iterates with each to get them to the right level based on experience, training, ability, situation, and resources all relative to their assignment. It is not critical to get each to be like the others though patterns, standards, and best practices will likely emerge over time.

The one-on-one process as described invariably improves performance because most people are so busy doing their jobs that they do not have time to get clear about what is most important even though being clear about what is most important correlates highly with success (as explained so well in the first of Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits for Success: First things First).

One-on-Ones are a structured, systematic way for a leader to do the one thing that is most likely to lead to the best performance: get themselves and their direct reports absolutely clear about what is at the top of each to-do list.

Keep in mind

It is harder than it seems for a leader, let alone direct reports, to determine what is most important to do next. When they collaborate on the to-do list, leader and direct report form a team of two working together to apply their relative strengths to accomplish the same thing, in the same way, for the same reason, and for mutual success; all of which leads to improved clarity, alignment, better choices, and, most likely, also to better results.

Starting the one-on-one with what has happened on what was agreed upon last time instills accountability and increases the odds that what was agreed will indeed be acted upon. Use the Meeting Record template to memorialize each session and to set up for the next. Agreeing on what measure to watch increases focus, accountability, and the odds of success. Collaborating to find the right measures to watch clarifies what the person is to accomplish and ensures everyone is on the same page. Remember: You can’t manage what you don’t measure!

Requiring direct reports to think through, organize for discussion, and turn-in prepared summaries ahead of meeting requires them to step-back, reflect, and consolidate what is going on as opposed to coming up with something of the fly. The result is less time in the one-on-one figuring out what is going on and more time working towards results.

Leaders that stay present and in a collaborative mindset (without taking over) create the opportunity to clarify, do, track, and report on what is to be done, ask good questions that lead to breakthroughs, giving advice and artifacts that increase the odds of better results, sooner.

Put These Ideas Into Practice

In the Manage to Lead (MtL) program, you don’t just study tools like one-on-one meetings — you apply them directly to your own organization. YOUR CASE IS THE COURSE. By working hands-on with proven frameworks, you and your team surface hidden assumptions, sharpen execution, and accelerate performance. Learn more about the MtL program here »

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